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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27515617">you wanna break my heart</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayfranzkafka/pseuds/gayfranzkafka'>gayfranzkafka</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>MASH (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>College AU, F/F, Gay yearning, IASIP's "The Gang Gets New Wheels" meets CRJ's "Fever" meets Maurice (1987), M/M, college heartbreak, happy lesbian endings, the concept of this fic is:, things end badly for trapper/hawkeye but well for ginger/margaret, we've got bike theft drunken waffle house visits spring break beach house trips and more</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-08 04:41:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,491</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27515617</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayfranzkafka/pseuds/gayfranzkafka</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawkeye &amp; Trapper are hooking up, but Hawkeye's worried it means more to him than it does to Trapper. Trapper's <em>also</em> hooking up with Ginger, but Ginger and her roommate, Margaret, might feel more for each other than platonic roommates should. When the four of them, along with their friend Oliver, end up on a Spring Break beach house vacation, chaos ensues. Drunken waffle house visits, bike theft, sunset walks on the beach, and more lead to heartbreak for some and happy endings for others.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>"Trapper" John McIntyre/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Ginger Bayliss/Margaret Houlihan, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan &amp; Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Oliver Harmon Jones &amp; Margaret Houlihan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic is riddled with historical anachronisms. I know this, but let's just have fun.</p><p>Thank you so much to horaetio for beta reading!! Allow me to once again recommend her incredible <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25491028">Trapper/Hawkeye fic</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hawkeye Pierce is fucking his best friend, and it’s going to end badly for him. He <em>knows</em> it’s going to end badly for him, but he can’t seem to make himself stop. He’s sitting in his dorm on a Friday afternoon, half trying to study for an upcoming Anatomy test, half trying to tell himself that he’s not going to go to whatever party Trapper inevitably invites him to, when Trapper bursts into Hawkeye’s room.</p><p>“Hey, babe,” Trapper says, putting a case of beer down on Hawkeye’s desk. Hawkeye flinches a little bit at the term of endearment. Trapper calls everybody “babe”—it’s not something he reserves for Hawkeye. “You’re not studying, are you? Margaret told me Loraine’s throwing a party at her place tonight.”</p><p>“Actually I am studying, yeah. You should try it sometime.”</p><p>“I tried it. Doctor told me I’m allergic.”</p><p>Hawkeye rolls his eyes. “Maybe you should get a second opinion.”</p><p>“Maybe you can give me a lookover later tonight, let me know what you think.” Hawkeye watches as Trapper very clearly eyes him over, as he gives him that little grin he saves only for Hawkeye when no one’s around, and for every woman in the world when they’re out in public. Trapper’s comment doesn’t even really make sense, not in the context of what they were just talking about, but the look is still enough to undo Hawkeye. He shuts his book with a sigh. Hawkeye knows that the pain of spending the whole party watching Trapper undoubtedly flirt with someone who’s not him is only slightly less bad than the pain of staying in and wondering who he’s flirting with.</p><p>“Fine,” Hawkeye says. “I’ll go to the party.” It’s still only around six so far; hopefully he can have a few hours of exquisite agony alone with Trapper before he has to endure a few hours of acute agony with Trapper and other people.</p><p>“Great!” Trapper says. “Ginger’s going too, so she said we should stop by her room to pregame.”</p><p>Oooof course. He’s not even going to get a few hours alone with Trapper. Ginger is Trapper’s… well, not girlfriend, necessarily. Trapper doesn’t like to <em>put a label on anything</em>, something that Hawkeye knows <em>all too well</em>. In fact, in some weird way, Hawkeye almost thinks Trapper <em>respects</em> Ginger too much for them to be dating. He’s seen the kinds of girls Trapper dates. Absolutely stunning, with no personality. Trapper doesn’t seem to actually <em>like</em> any of them, and they always end up dumped to the curbside in about a week. A fact which <em>absolutely</em> holds no significance and which Hawkeye <em>never</em> dwells on. Ginger’s stunning, too, but she’s got a personality to match. She and Trapper are genuinely <em>friends</em>. Friends that happen to sleep together fairly regularly. Another fact which Hawkeye absolutely does not dwell on.</p><p>The problem is, he genuinely likes Ginger, which makes the seething jealousy all the more unbearable. He desperately wants to spend the next few hours alone with Trapper, but he can’t come up with any reason he can give Trapper for it, so he hears himself saying, “Great!”</p><p>Trapper gives Hawkeye an easy smile. Everything is easy with Trapper. It’s easy for Trapper to convince Hawkeye to go out drinking with him. If Trapper doesn’t end up going home with Ginger, it’ll be easy for Trapper to get Hawkeye into bed with him after the party’s over and Trapper’s just drunk enough to feign ignorance the next morning. It’s easy for Trapper to break Hawkeye’s heart, over and over again, in a million little ways.</p><p>Hawkeye gives Trapper an easy smile back.</p><p>Trapper grabs the beer and slings an arm around Hawkeye’s neck, practically dragging him out of his room. “Wait, I gotta leave a note for Oliver,” Hawkeye says. Oliver being Hawkeye’s roommate and Trapper and Hawkeye’s friend.</p><p>Freshman year, Trapper had wanted to room together, and Hawkeye had had to give him the excuse that if they had different roommates it’d be a fast way to make more friends. As self-destructive as Hawkeye is, <em>rooming</em> with Trapper is where he drew the line. So Hawkeye and Oliver had been randomly assigned to room together freshman year, and even though Oliver is a hotshot football player, and Hawkeye cannot play a single sport to save his life, the two of them have gotten along swimmingly and roomed together ever since. Trapper had ended up being assigned to room with this unassuming Catholic kid and religion major named Francis. At first he’d been a little wary of the guy, but after it turned out Francis always seemed to have the best weed on campus, Trapper and Francis had gotten along just fine. </p><p>When Hawkeye says he needs to leave a note for Oliver, Trapper releases his hold on Hawkeye. Hawkeye looks around at his desk, grabbing the OChem notes he took while hung-over, which are pretty much illegible anyway, and ripping off the corner. He starts to scribble a note about the party and going to Ginger’s to pre-game, so that Oliver can meet them somewhere along the way.</p><p>Trapper gets impatient quickly, though, and says, “Come on, what’re you doing, penning him some kind of love letter?”</p><p>Hawkeye feels that instinctual stab of fear that he gets whenever someone comes too close to the truth. Not that it’s Oliver he’s in love with. Still, he has to bite back the urge to yell, “No!” at the assertion that he’d write a guy a love letter. He knows that would only make things worse. So instead, he adds onto the joke, saying, “Yeah, I’m just trying to figure out what rhymes with ‘Oliver.’ I mean, there’s ‘all of her,’ but that doesn’t seem very apropos to the situation.”</p><p>“We’d better leave the poetry to the English majors,” Trapper says.</p><p>“I think you’re right,” Hawkeye agrees, finishing the note and following Trapper out the door. They make their way down the stairs and outside, where Trapper’s got his bike leaning up against Hawkeye’s. Campus isn’t <em>that</em> big, and most people end up walking places. And the people who <em>do</em> bike tend to have functional bikes, the kind you’d ride around a city.</p><p>Hawkeye and Trapper, on the other hand, have matching, bright-turquoise BMX bikes. It started out as a joke, as everything does with them. Trapper and Hawkeye have been friends since they were kids. The fact that they ended up at the same college is most definitely just coincidence. It’s <em>not</em> because Trapper had wanted them to apply to only the same places. Hawkeye <em>definitely</em> didn’t go along with Trapper’s suggestion because “unhealthy codependence” is <em>not</em> a trademark of their relationship.</p><p>Anyway. When they’d gotten to college as freshmen, they’d spent a lot of time lying around in each other’s rooms, complaining about how it seemed like everyone but them had cars and could go into the city really easily. It was <em>definitely</em> not while they were lying in Hawkeye’s twin bed together naked, after having just hooked up, that Trapper said, “Hey, remember those bikes we used to have as kids?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “The turquoise ones?” They used to spend practically every weekend in the wilderness outside Crabapple, just riding around in the hills. Hawk loves this shorthand between them, how this simple question and answer conjures up so many memories for both of them. One time, at a holiday party back home, (because of course Trapper’s family is close to Hawkeye’s, and of course they spend practically every holiday together), Trapper had joked that it was patching up Hawkeye’s skinned knees after he wiped out on his bike that first made him interested in medicine. Hawkeye doesn’t like to admit how often his thoughts return to that joke.</p><p>“Yeah,” Trapper says. “Those were the days.” <em>Weren’t they ever</em>, Hawkeye thinks. Trapper continues, “We should get ourselves bikes like those again. People’d be so jealous of us it wouldn’t even matter that we didn’t have a car.”</p><p>“Would we get them matching, just like when we were kids?” Hawkeye smiles.</p><p>“Sure,” Trapper says. “Nothing brings in the ladies like matching BMX bikes.”</p><p>Because that’s how Trapper is. Even lying there naked together, even after he’s <em>just</em> been with Hawkeye, Trapper makes a joke like this. Because God forbid Hawkeye have a single hour of deluding himself that what’s going on between them is of any significance to Trapper.</p><p>Hawkeye hopes that’s the end of it, but Trapper brings the joke back up about a week later, when they happen to be walking past a bike store on their way to some greasy spoon. “C’mon, let’s go look,” Trapper says. “See if they have any bikes fit for two men such as ourselves.”</p><p>“And what kind of man is that, exactly?” Hawkeye asks, still thinking Trapper is fully kidding around.</p><p>“That’s for us to know and no one else to find out,” Trapper says, winking. <em>I hate him</em>, Hawkeye thinks. Then, <em>I love him</em>.</p><p>He follows Trapper into the store, where an overly-enthusiastic assistant comes over and starts asking Trapper what he’s looking for. To Hawkeye’s surprise, Trapper dredges up a whole bunch of knowledge about bikes that Hawkeye has long forgotten. He’s asking the sales assistant all these questions, and actually looking at various models as if he’s actually considering buying them. After the sales assistant eventually leaves them alone, her blonde ponytail swinging behind her as she goes to help some other customer, Hawkeye says, “You aren’t really serious about this, are you?”</p><p>“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life,” Trapper says, eyes still locked on some bike as he examines its braking system. <em>That may actually be true</em>, Hawkeye thinks. He can’t help it, though. He gets swept up in it. Of course he does. Trapper doesn’t usually ever bring back up anything they talk about during or after their <em>little moments of indiscretion</em>. Hell, Trapper usually doesn’t even stick around long enough after they’ve hooked up for there to even <em>be</em> any conversation. Usually. But sometimes he does. And so Hawkeye can’t help but hope that these bikes <em>mean</em> something, that maybe Trapper’s trying to signal something to Hawkeye that he can’t quite bring himself to say in words. <em>I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life</em>. Trapper’s not a serious guy, so if he’s serious about these bikes, well, then, maybe he’s serious about… other things, too.</p><p>“I think this is a great idea, actually,” Hawkeye says.</p><p>“Yeah?” says Trapper, finally turning to look at him, one eyebrow cocked, that dopey smile on his face that Hawkeye loves so much.</p><p>“Yeah,” Hawkeye says.</p><p>About fifteen minutes later, they make their joint purchase, the biggest investment Hawkeye’d make all semester. The only distinguishing characteristic between the two bikes is the basket Trapper buys to put on his. “On a BMX bike?” Hawkeye asks, incredulous.</p><p>“Yeah,” Trapper replies. “I’ll need it to carry beer.”</p><p>It’s this very basket that Trapper now sets his six pack in as he and Hawkeye get ready to make their way to Ginger’s room. It’s warm out, and there’s just a little bit of a breeze blowing. As they begin to pedal, Trapper lets out a whoop of joy, pulling ahead of Hawkeye but turning back to smile at him over his shoulder. Hawkeye follows, pedaling to catch up. As they both pick up speed, Hawkeye feels as though he’s physically leaving his worries behind him. He wants it to be just him and Trapper on these bikes forever, always in motion, never slowing down. No crash. He knows it looks goofy, and he’s too old to be doing it, but he pedals really fast, then stands up, balancing like that, letting his speed run down before starting the cycle again. He’s all long limbs and no grace, but he makes it work, somehow. He always figures out a way to make it work.</p><p>As they ride across campus, more than a few people yell or wave at them. At Trapper, really. Hawkeye knows that he’s known around campus by association. Riding the coattails of Trapper’s penchant to cause trouble. Hawkeye’s <em>almost</em> as much of a trouble-maker as Trapper, but Trapper’s got some kind of almost-enviable charisma that always ends up making him the face people associate with their rabble-rousing.</p><p>Soon enough, they’re parking their bikes outside Ginger’s dorm. Neither of them have bike locks, although Hawkeye keeps saying they should buy some. He keeps telling Trapper that one or both of their bikes are gonna get stolen, and that when they do, Trapper can’t come crying to him. But every time Hawkeye brings up the issue, Trapper just shrugs and says, “I’ve yet to face the consequences of my actions. I don’t intend to start now.”</p><p>And Hawkeye, for whatever reason, always allows himself to be caught up in Trapper’s view of the world, one where things will always just find a way to work themselves out. So they both leave their bikes outside Ginger’s dorm without bothering to secure them at all. </p><p>A minute later, and Trapper’s bursting open the door to Ginger’s room without bothering to knock, six pack situated obnoxiously on his shoulder. Hawkeye can <em>tell</em> he’s flexing unnecessarily, holding it that way.</p><p>“Shit!” Margaret yells as Trapper opens the door, jumping a little and smearing the eyeliner she’d been applying down her cheek.</p><p>Trapper laughs. “Great look, babe,” he says, and he and Hawkeye make their way fully into the room, shutting the door behind them and then just sort of lingering near the doorway.</p><p>Hawkeye can swear he sees Margaret blush just a little before she scowls at Trapper and says, “Can you please learn to knock? Who invited you over, anyway?”</p><p>Margaret and Ginger are roommates. They actually met through Trapper and Hawkeye a while back. When both of their roommate situations had fallen through at the end of last year, they’d decided to room together. Margaret and Ginger’s relationship has always been slightly confusing to Hawkeye; half the time, it seems like one of them is annoying the other, and the other half the time, they act like they’re practically best friends. He hasn’t ever asked either of them about it, though. He knows all too well what it’s like to have complicated relationships with the people in your life, the kind that you don’t want anyone prying into. Not that that’s what’s going on between them. But still.</p><p>Margaret doesn’t tend to have many female friends, and spends most of her time hanging out with Hawkeye, Trapper, and Oliver, whereas Ginger has a whole social circle outside of them. But this year, especially since Margaret and Ginger are roommates, they’ve been spending more time together as a group. Half the time, they get along really well, and then half the time, Trapper or Hawkeye are driving Margaret crazy, or Margaret’s driving Ginger or Hawkeye crazy, and so forth. Out of all of them, Oliver gets along the best with everybody by far.</p><p>Hearing Margaret’s question, Ginger sticks her head out from behind a flower-covered divider that they’ve got set up in the middle of the room and says, “I invited them.” </p><p>“You’re the one that told us about the party,” Trapper tells Margaret.</p><p>“Oh, did you mistake that for an invitation?” Margaret says, not taking her eyes off her compact as she tries to scrub the eyeliner off her face with a Kleenex.</p><p>They are saved from further bickering, though, when Ginger peaks her head out a little further from behind the divider. “I’m still trying to decide what dress to wear to the party,” she says, holding out two options. Hawkeye can’t see much of her, just her head and arm, but it looks like she’s got just a robe on. He can tell it’s for his sake that she’s staying behind the divider; he’s sure both Margaret and Trapper have seen her in just a robe (or less) plenty of times. He almost wishes he could tell her she doesn’t have to worry about modesty around him, that he plays for the other team. But while that revelation might ease this specific situation, it’d make the rest of his life a whole lot more complicated.</p><p>Margaret doesn’t even really look up as Ginger says this. She keeps her eyes on her compact as she continues to try and get the eyeliner off her face, telling Ginger, “You should wear your blue one.”</p><p>Ginger rolls her eyes. “That isn’t one of the two options, Margaret.”</p><p>“Well, the blue one looks best on you,” Margaret says.</p><p>Ginger ignores the comment and turns to Trapper and Hawkeye, eyebrows raised. “I don’t have an eye for this kind of stuff,” Trapper says.</p><p>“I don’t know <em>what</em> I keep you around for if you’re not going to give me fashion advice,” Ginger says.</p><p>Trapper gives her a grin. “I have an idea of why else you let me hang around.” Hawkeye does his best to smile like he finds that funny.</p><p>“Hawkeye?” Ginger says, still holding up both dresses. Hawkeye likes Ginger, but he’s scared of getting too close to her, knowing it’ll hurt, and giving her fashion advice feels oddly intimate. So he just shrugs. “You two are useless,” Ginger groans. “I hope you know I could’ve been hanging out with Kellye right now.”</p><p>“Yeah, but then you’d miss my winning smile,” Trapper says.</p><p>Ginger rolls her eyes. Hawkeye feels bad for being unhelpful. “Do a—why don’t you do a little fashion show?” he suggests. “Maybe if we can see how they both look, we can give you better advice.” Ginger rolls her eyes again. If Hawkeye had a nickel for how many times someone in their little group rolled their eyes every time they hung out… but then Ginger seems to like the idea despite herself, because she disappears behind the screen again to change.</p><p>“Fuck, this isn’t coming off,” Margaret says, giving up on her makeup, setting her compact down, and turning around. “Can I have one of those beers, so I can at least drink my sorrows about my ruined looks away?” she asks Trapper.</p><p>“Sure,” Trapper says, handing her a beer, then looking around. “Shit, I didn’t bring an opener with me. Do you have one?”</p><p>Margaret takes the beer, then begins looking through her cluttered desk. From behind the screen, Ginger calls out, “I bet there’s some sort of medical-grade shit in the labs we could repurpose as makeup remover. Guaranteed to get it off in three seconds and maybe take some of your skin with it. But in the meantime, if you don’t have any makeup remover, maybe try nail polish remover? I have some on my dresser.”</p><p>Margaret’s eyes briefly flicker over to the screen, but, when she realizes Ginger is still changing, she quickly turns back to her desk, continuing her search. “Will you bring it over when you get the chance?” Margaret calls out.</p><p>“Sure,” Ginger says. “God forbid you walk ten feet.”</p><p>“That’s not…” Margaret starts, but then interrupts herself. “Here it is!” she says, pulling a zippo lighter out of the pile of papers and assorted items on her desk. She then confidently uses it to get the cap off her beer in about an instant.</p><p>Trapper gives Margaret an impressed look. “Now that’s hot,” he says. “Will you teach me how to do that?”</p><p>“I can’t believe you don’t already know how,” Margaret says.</p><p>“I used to just open ‘em with my teeth, but then I chipped a tooth.” When Margaret gives him a look, he says, “It’s true! Look!” He bends down to where she’s sitting in her desk chair, opening his mouth and pointing to one of his teeth. Hawkeye knows exactly which one. Left incisor. He was there when it happened. “See?” Trapper says.</p><p>“It’s a good thing you’re not trying to become a dentist,” Ginger says from behind the screen.</p><p>Margaret gives Trapper a disgusted expression and pushes his face away from her with her hands, but then starts to teach him how to open a beer using a lighter.</p><p>Hawkeye looks around, feeling awkward still standing in the doorway. There’s no chairs. There’s nowhere to sit, in fact, aside from Margaret’s bed, and he has the feeling she won’t like it if he goes for that option. So instead, he just flops down onto her rug, sprawling out. “Hand me a beer once you figure out how to get it open, will you?” he says to Trapper.</p><p>“That might be about thirty years from now, at the rate he’s going,” Margaret says.</p><p>At this point, Ginger comes out from behind the screen. “How do I look?” she says, smiling, already knowing she looks great. She’s got on a sleeveless red dress that’s cinched at the waist. Trapper lets out a whistle, and Ginger smiles as she spins around, doing a little “ta-da” motion with her hands. Trapper, still not having managed to get a beer open, abandons the project and goes over to where Ginger is, wrapping his arms around her and giving her a kiss.</p><p>“Doesn’t she look great?” he asks Hawkeye and Margaret.</p><p>“You do,” Hawkeye tells Ginger miserably. She gives him such a sincere smile that it makes him feel worse.</p><p>“I still think the blue one would be better,” Margaret says, barely glancing up before taking the beer Trapper abandoned and getting the lid off in an easy instant. Hawkeye immediately reaches out for it, and she leans down to hand it to him wordlessly.</p><p>“Oh, boo,” Ginger says, sticking her tongue out at Margaret, then laughing. “Why don’t you wear it?” she says. “I think it’d look good on you.”</p><p>“Oh, I was just going to wear what I’ve got on now,” Margaret says, concentrating on opening a third beer. Trapper lets go of Ginger and makes his way back over to grab it from Margaret. After he’s got it, he flops down next to Hawkeye. It’s a small space, and Trapper’s legs tangle up just a bit with Hawkeye’s. Trapper seems unconcerned about it, and Hawkeye does his best not to let his face turn bright red. Trapper’s acting so casual about it, and no one else seems to be batting an eye, that Hawkeye thinks maybe it’s not a big deal.</p><p>“You don’t wanna dress up?” Ginger says. Margaret’s wearing a pretty simple pants and shirt combo that she must’ve worn to class earlier today.</p><p>Margaret glances down at herself. “I’m more comfortable like this,” she says, popping open a fourth beer, then taking a big swig of her own.</p><p>Ginger shrugs. “Suit yourself,” she says, then walks over to where Margaret’s sitting. She’s got her nail polish remover and a cotton ball in one of her hands. Margaret turns back to her desk to try and locate her compact, which has already gotten lost in the mess, when Ginger says, “Here, let me do it.”</p><p>Before Margaret can protest, Ginger’s got the nail polish remover open and is tilting Margaret’s chin up with one hand and applying the cotton ball to her face with the other. Ginger sort of scrunches up one of her eyes in concentration, rubbing the spot away. Hawkeye can swear, once again, that he sees Margaret blush. Soon enough, though, Ginger declares, “There! It’s gone. Now can I have that beer as a reward?”</p><p>Margaret hands the beer over to her wordlessly. Ginger looks down at herself and the dress she’s got on. “I think I like this one. I’m sticking with it.” Then she takes her beer and walks over toward Margaret’s bed. “Do you mind?” she asks. Margaret shrugs, and Ginger sits down on the end of it.</p><p>They sit drinking and talking for a little while. Margaret asks if anyone’s studied for the anatomy test, which leads Trapper to groan that he hasn’t, just as Ginger says, “Yes,” and Hawkeye says, “I tried to.” Ginger heckles Trapper about not studying, throwing a pillow at him from the bed, and he throws it back. Then he asks her if she’ll help him study sometime tomorrow; he says it salaciously, but Hawkeye knows for a fact that Trapper actually <em>does</em> tend to get more studying done around Ginger than he does around anyone else. Hawkeye’s studied with the two of them a few times; the two of them tend to find the exact same little details of journal articles interesting, and they’ll often get so sucked into a conversation that they practically forget Hawk is there. It’s almost harder than seeing him kiss her, in a way.</p><p>Just as Hawkeye’s thinking this, though, the day is saved when Oliver bursts into the room. “Does <em>anybody</em> ever knock?” Margaret says, almost spilling beer on herself.</p><p>Oliver gives her a grin. “Hey, Maggie.”</p><p>“Hey, Ollie,” she shoots back. For some reason, Margaret seems to get along better with Oliver than she does with Trapper or Hawkeye. He seems to know how to gently rib her, exactly when she can take a joke and when to hold back, a balance that Hawkeye has never been able to quite figure out. Maybe it’s just that Oliver’s much more easygoing than Hawkeye; Margaret and Hawkeye’s two high-strung personalities seem to clash a bit too much. And Hawkeye honestly doesn’t know <em>what</em> is ever going on between Margaret and Trapper.</p><p>Oliver’s got another six pack with him. “I’ve brought libations!” he declares. Everyone cheers as he shuts the door and hoists the six pack over his head, parading theatrically around the small room with it. Finally, he sets it down, taking one out. Margaret hands him her lighter without even having to be asked, and he opens it easily.</p><p>“Does <em>everyone</em> besides me know how to do that?” Trapper says.</p><p>“Margaret taught me how,” Oliver tells him.</p><p>“<em>I</em> don’t know how,” Hawkeye says.</p><p>“That’s a surprise, seeing as how you’re so good with your hands,” Trapper says, pausing just a moment too long before he adds, “You know, being a prospective surgeon and all.”</p><p>“Right,” Hawkeye says, emptying the last of his beer and reaching out a hand towards Oliver. “Beer me,” he says, and Oliver opens another one, handing it to Hawkeye before sitting down on the floor next to where Margaret is in her desk chair.</p><p>Oliver reaches into his backpack and pulls out a large Hawaiian shirt. He, Hawkeye, and Trapper are already all wearing one, their Friday night tradition. “Maggie, I brought you your very own Hawaiian shirt. I figured, since, you know, you’ve been wasting so many of your Fridays with all us boys, we should induct you into the gang officially.”</p><p>For it a second, Margaret looks like she might cry, but then she laughs as she takes the shirt. “Close your eyes,” she tells everyone. “Especially you, Trapper. No peeking. I’m gonna change.” They comply. “Alright, you can open them back up.”</p><p>She’s smiling. The shirt is way too big for her, but in a charming way. Oliver reaches up and rolls the sleeves up a little bit for her. “Now you just need a cigar to go in the pocket,” Hawkeye tells Margaret. Freshman year, Oliver, Hawkeye, and Trapper had started smoking cigars after their midterms and finals. Somehow, that’s deteriorated into them smoking them every Friday to celebrate having made it through a week of classes.</p><p>“Why don’t you give me yours?” she says.</p><p>“Sure, I don’t want it anyway. I’ve much too delicate a constitution to really smoke,” Hawkeye says, taking his cigar out of his shirt pocket and going to hand it to her.</p><p>She laughs and takes it, but then she says, “Actually, I want a cigarette.” She starts searching her desk.</p><p>“Oh, I have the pack,” Ginger says, getting up off the bed to go find it on her side of the room. The two of them are both trying to quit, so they only buy one pack at a time and share it.</p><p>Margaret climbs onto her bed and opens the window above it, sticking her head out. “It’s raining,” she calls to Ginger, “so if we just lean out the windows to smoke, it probably won’t stink up the place too bad.”</p><p>“Fine with me,” Ginger says, coming back around from behind the divider with a pack of cigarettes in her hand. Margaret’s already sitting on the little window ledge just above her bed, feet on the bed. She reaches down and helps Ginger up. The two of them perch there on the ledge, Ginger hitting the pack against her hand a few times before pulling out a cigarette. “Do you want to share one?” she says, eyebrow cocked, making fun of herself and Margaret just a little. “Seeing as we’re quitting, and all.”</p><p>“Fine with me,” Margaret says. Ginger puts the cigarette up to her lips and leans in so Margaret can light it with her lighter. She takes a drag, then hands it over to Margaret. The two of them are crowded pretty close together, both doing their best to blow the smoke out the open window. Oliver and Trapper, down on the rug with Hawkeye, are caught up in some conversation about football that Hawkeye knows he wouldn’t understand a word of, even if he were paying attention. Glancing up at Margaret and Ginger, though, even though they’re only a few feet away, they look like they’re in their own world entirely. They’re not even really talking, mostly just staring out at the rain and passing the cigarette wordlessly between them, but Hawkeye suddenly feels like he’s intruding, and looks away. He feels caught between their world and Oliver and Trapper’s conversation, not sure of his place in either, and so he just nurses his beer silence for a minute or two.</p><p>After Margaret and Ginger finish their cigarette, though, they both hop down off the bed. Hawkeye notices that they almost pointedly sit far away from each other, Ginger taking a seat next to Trapper, and Margaret taking a seat next to Oliver. Trapper sits up, detangling his legs from Hawkeye’s, and puts an arm casually around Ginger. Oliver leans over and nudges Margaret’s shoulder with his own. Hawkeye feels almost like a fifth wheel.</p><p>Everyone makes quick work of the two six packs. It’s enough for them all to feel buzzed, but no one’s truly drunk yet. “Well,” Trapper says, setting his empty beer down. “Shall we go out and join the masses in drunken revelry?”</p><p>“I think so,” Ginger says.</p><p>Trapper gets up and holds the door open for Ginger, bowing over-ly politely to her. She giggles, making her way out the door, Trapper following behind her. Margaret, Oliver, and Hawkeye stand up too, but Margaret goes to the door first and lets herself out. “Don’t even <em>think</em> about holding the door open for me,” she says to both of them.</p><p>Oliver shrugs. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”</p><p>By the time the three of them make it back down to where Trapper and Hawkeye left their bikes, Trapper’s already begun biking away, Ginger perched on his handlebars. “Alright, Oliver, climb on up,” Hawkeye jokes, going over to his own bike.</p><p>Margaret rolls her eyes. “The party is a five minute walk from here. You’re telling me you can’t just leave the bike and come back for it later?”</p><p><em>If I leave the bike, then there’s the chance I’ll run into Trapper coming back from the party with Ginger, and seeing them arrive at it together is bad enough</em>, Hawkeye thinks. What he says, though, is, “What did I tell you earlier about my constitution, Margaret? I couldn’t handle the strain of walking that far.”</p><p>Margaret looks nervous, then, almost like she thinks Oliver is going to really take Hawkeye up on his offer and climb up onto his handlebars. It’s funny that someone like Margaret, who so often seems to bristle at the idea of anyone getting too friendly with her, is scared at the thought of being left behind, especially when it’s <em>her</em> friend Lorraine who’s throwing the party. Still, Oliver does not, of course, climb onto Hawkeye’s bike, but instead says, “As much as I’d love the lift, I don’t think your ‘delicate constitution’ could handle having me on the handlebars. I’ll walk down with Margaret and meet you there.”</p><p>“Sure,” Hawkeye says. “See you there.”</p><p>Hawkeye sails away, biking at a leisurely pace, almost glad from the respite from being around anyone else. Biking is as close as he gets to meditation, and he’s able to briefly leave his worries—about Trapper, about his classes, about where he fits in with his friend group—behind him. </p><p>When he gets to the party, he considers loitering outside for a minute or two, waiting for Oliver and Margaret to arrive; at least with them around, he’s got a distraction from Ginger and Trapper flirting. But as he’s lingering outside the party, his friend Max walks by. “Hey, captain,” Max says to Hawkeye, a running joke that refers back to a game of drunken Capture the Flag, in which Hawkeye was captain of the team that lost spectacularly badly.</p><p>“Hey, Max,” Hawkeye says. “Nice dress. You make this one yourself?”</p><p>Max is wearing an understated blue number that goes down to his knees. He glances down at it and says, “Of course. You coming in to the party?”</p><p>“I suppose so,” Hawkeye says, following Max with a sigh.</p><p>Max looks back over his shoulder as they make their way up the front porch steps, raising his eyebrows at Hawkeye. “Hey, I know the alcohol is always pretty cheap at these things, but it’s not <em>all</em> that bad.”</p><p>“Don’t mind me, it’s just the seasonal depression acting up again.”</p><p>“It’s March.”</p><p>“Yeah, it’s sort of an all-seasons type of deal,” Hawkeye replies, but his words are drowned out as they make their way into the house, where Demi Lovato’s “Cool for the Summer” is blasting over the record player. <em>Just something that we wanna try / 'Cause you and I / We're cool for the summer</em>, Demi sings. Fittingly, Hawkeye spots Trapper in the crowd almost immediately. He’s over at the punch bowl with Ginger. Hawkeye considers pretending he doesn’t see Trapper and following Max deeper into the crowd, but then Trapper waves enthusiastically at him, and Hawkeye feels he has no choice but to make his way over.</p><p>As soon as he gets close, Trapper pushes a red solo cup into Hawkeye’s hand so forcefully that the liquid inside almost sloshes out and onto his shoes. “Only the finest,” Trapper says.</p><p>“Is it spiked punch?” Hawkeye asks Ginger, ignoring Trapper. As much as he’s jealous of her, he often also feels like she is, in some odd way, his ally when Trapper gets like this.</p><p>“It’s spiked punch,” Ginger replies. “And whatever alcohol they put in it, it almost tastes like they brewed it themselves.”</p><p>Hawkeye takes a sip and almost gags, but manages to maintain his composure. The alcohol is indeed so strong that its flavor manages to cut through the sickly sweet fruit juice, and the sugar almost makes the sting worse somehow. “Good stuff,” Hawkeye says, coughing a little. Trapper smacks him on the back, harder than necessary. “How much has he had?” Hawkeye asks Ginger.</p><p>“I think he downed a whole glass the minute we walked in the door,” she tells him, taking a sip from her own red solo cup and grimacing.</p><p>“Ladies, there’s no need to talk about me like I can’t hear you,” Trapper says, even more loudly than the noise of the party necessitates. “I’ve had just enough alcohol as is necessary for a good time.”</p><p>Ginger looks at Hawkeye and rolls her eyes. Hawkeye almost hates it more—Ginger looking at him conspiratorially, Trapper addressing them both at the same time—than being forced to stand to the side and watch them flirt. It’s confusing. “I’m gonna go talk to—“ he glances out into the crowd, in search of someone he knows—“to Francis,” Hawkeye tells them.</p><p>“To Francis?” Trapper says. “Why Francis? We’ve got plenty of weed already at the moment.”</p><p>“I happen to like him,” Hawkeye says.</p><p>“Aw, let him go,” Ginger says, putting a hand on Trapper’s arm, and Trapper listens to her, turning away from Hawkeye to wrap his arms around Ginger, so easily over his insistence that Hawkeye stay. Hawkeye tries not to look back as he makes his way over to the corner of the party where Francis is talking animatedly to some other religion majors.</p><p>“Listen, I just think William James was writing from within his culturally Protestant viewpoint without realizing—Oh, hi Hawkeye—without realizing it. I mean, it’s not that religious institutions are above criticism, it’s that setting up a dichotomy between the way religion is experienced on an individual level versus on an institutional level doesn’t make sense, especially when you’re assigning a positive moral value to one and a negative moral value to the other! James is ironically codifying the very Protestant understanding of the individual as the nexus of religious understanding without acknowledging that that’s what he’s doing.”</p><p>“Oh, I <em>totally</em> agree about James,” Hawkeye says to Francis, in a voice that makes it clear that he has no idea what he’s talking about.</p><p>Francis blushes a little, pulling away from his group of friends, who pick up his argument right where he left off, to talk just to Hawkeye. “I know it doesn’t sound interesting to someone who isn’t—“</p><p>Hawkeye cuts Francis off before he can even finish the sentence, though. He was just teasing the guy, and actually <em>does</em> like listening to him talk about religion. “Oh, no, I was making fun of <em>myself</em> for not having read up on my James. A little self-deprecating humor goes a long way at parties, I’ve found.”</p><p>“Oh, well, you seem perfectly fine at parties <em>without</em> the self-deprecation, in my opinion.”</p><p>“Oh, really?” Hawkeye says, leaning up against the wall in what he hopes is a comically-flirtatious manor. “Tell me more about how I don’t need to be self-deprecating.”</p><p>Hawkeye has to admit that he enjoys seeing if he can get Francis flustered, just a little bit. It’s just so easy to do. As he’s talking to Francis, he sees Margaret and Oliver come into the party, but he doesn’t make his way over to them. He likes to mingle; he gets along pretty well with everybody, and he likes that parties are an excuse to talk to people he likes but doesn’t necessarily speak to on a daily basis. He makes the rounds, trying not to watch out of the corner of his eye for where Trapper and Ginger are, trying not to wonder about who Trapper will end up going home with tonight.</p><p>Eventually, though, he finds himself so caught up in the energy of the party that he really <em>does</em> forget about Trapper and Ginger. It probably helps that Ginger was right about the punch; whatever they spiked it with is so strong that it really does taste like it was brewed in someone’s bathtub. Maybe it was. That doesn’t stop Hawkeye from downing three glasses.</p><p>After he finishes up his conversation with Francis, he runs into a freshman he knows named Radar, and teasingly reminds him not to drink too much. He then makes his way to the kitchen, where, in his experience, there’s inexplicably always the most fun to be had at parties. Sure enough, he finds his friend Sidney there among the crowds. Hawkeye and Sidney, both having drunk their fair share of punch, get involved in a drunken and very animated conversation about Freud’s cocaine use. Hawkeye, having finished his third cup of punch during the conversation, realizes that he <em>may</em> have made a mistake. The room is spinning slightly, so he decides to make his way out onto the front porch and just sit on the front steps for a minute.</p><p>***</p><p>As they get closer to the party, Margaret turns to Oliver and says, “Do you think they’ll notice?”</p><p>“Notice what?” Oliver asks.</p><p>“The shirt,” Margaret says, looking back down at it.</p><p>“ ‘Them’ who?”</p><p>“I don’t know. Everyone at the party.”</p><p>Instead of answering, he asks, “Do you <em>want</em> them to notice?”</p><p>Margaret shrugs. She’s not sure. She doesn’t tend to dress <em>too</em> feminine most days; she wears pants to class more often than not. Most men either already have a problem with her because she sets the curve in all her classes or have gotten over themselves enough by now that the pants aren’t a problem. But still, she tends to wear dresses to parties and the like. And she tends to compensate for the pants with makeup and feminine tops. She’s never felt <em>so</em> dressed down before, and the fact that Oliver, Hawkeye, and Trapper wear them every Friday makes the shirt feel all the more masculine. Part of her almost <em>wants</em> to provoke people. She’s never felt quite like she’s fit in anywhere, and so she almost wants to drive the knife in farther, to make a point of it. But she feels comfortable in the shirt; she doesn’t want to wear it merely out of opposition to some ideal she can’t ever hope to measure up to, but to embrace it as a choice she’s making for herself.</p><p>That’s part of the reason she likes Oliver so much; she never feels like a <em>girl</em> when she’s around him. Trapper’s seeing Ginger, and Hawkeye, though seemingly single, has never seemed all that interested in Margaret, not like <em>that</em>. But both of them still flirt with her nonetheless, almost like a reflex, like they have to remind her or themselves occasionally that there’s a gendered divide in the friendship. Oliver’s not like that; instead, he brings her a Hawaiian shirt as a gift without her having to ask. They hang out in her room listening to records and just talking, without feeling like they have to put on an act for each other.</p><p>So, walking into the party, Margaret tries to hold onto that feeling. To just focus on being here to have fun with Oliver, and not on what everyone else, whose opinion she values less, is thinking. Still, she feels like she’s getting sharper glances than usual, although she can’t tell if she’s imagining it. Oliver seems to pick up on the fact that she’s still a bit on edge and says, “Shall we go maintain our place as the rightful beer pong champions of the school?”</p><p>“Yes,” Margaret says. Margaret and Oliver discovered very early into their friendship that they are both very good at beer pong, although Margaret gets about five times more competitive about it than Oliver does, which he thinks is funny. They are so good at it, in fact, that Margaret gets herself a cup of punch to drink as they’re playing beer pong, because they don’t mess up the game often enough to get drunk.</p><p>The drunker Margaret gets, the more at ease she feels in the shirt. She and Oliver beat first Igor and Rizzo, then Sam Flagg and Vinny Pratt, which is particularly satisfying. She and Oliver get particularly obnoxious about doing a coordinated victory dance after that win, and something about the alcohol and the adrenaline of the game goes to her head. </p><p>She begins to think that she should go out tomorrow and buy herself a whole closetful of shirts like this one. That she should throw away all her makeup, shave her head like she wanted to when she was little, before she knew how girls were supposed to look and act. The drunker she gets, the more she wants to go find Ginger. She can’t really explain why; she knows Ginger is literally her roommate, and that they saw each other an hour or so earlier. She just thinks it would be fun to talk to Ginger right now, is all. So eventually, mid-way through yet another game, she turns to Oliver and says,  “I’m bored. Let’s go find Ginger.”</p><p>Oliver raises his eyebrows at Margaret. “Ginger? How come?”</p><p>“I have something to tell her,” Margaret says. She doesn’t know what this “something” is, but she has the feeling it will come to her when she sees Ginger. Oliver, who seems to realize that Margaret has quickly and immediately lost all interest in the game she was ferociously invested in mere seconds ago, gently grabs her shoulders and moves her off to the side, so other players can take their place.</p><p>“Oh, really?” Oliver says. “And what’s that?”</p><p>Instead of answering the question, Margaret says, “Do you think people were staring at me tonight?”</p><p>“I think they were attending our beer pong wins with rapt attention,” Oliver says.</p><p>“No, but I mean—“ Margaret pauses. “You know what I mean,” she says, because she knows he does.</p><p>“Is this still about the shirt?” Oliver says. “Are you having a fashion crisis? Is that why you want to go and find Ginger? Because I think you look great.”</p><p>“I—“ Margaret pauses. “I like it. I need to go find Ginger and—“ she stops. “You know,” she says to Oliver. “When I was a kid, I wanted a crew cut.”</p><p>Oliver laughs a little at this, not unkindly. “A crew cut?” he says. “Really?”</p><p>“Yes,” Margaret says. “I wanted a crew cut. I wanted a crew cut, and now I still want a crew cut. And I need to go find Ginger and tell her I want a crew cut.”</p><p>“What do you need Ginger to know that for?” Oliver asks.</p><p>“She has scissors,” Margaret says very seriously. She makes a little <em>snip snip</em> motion with her hand in the air and continues, “She has scissors, and she could give me a crew cut.”</p><p>“Do you really need to ask her about that <em>now</em>?” Oliver says. “I mean, I want to keep playing beer pong. We’ve got a winning streak to maintain.”</p><p>“Well, you maintain our winning streak,” Margaret says. “I’m going to find Ginger.”</p><p>“Do you want me to come with you?”</p><p>“I’m fine,” she says, waving her hand.</p><p>“Okay, well, I’ll be here if you need me,” Oliver says, turning back to the table.</p><p>***</p><p>Margaret roams around the house for a little while, but the longer she’s away from her friends, the more confidence she loses. She doesn’t even see Lorraine anywhere, even though she’s the one hosting the party. Anyway, telling Ginger she wants to shave her head is ridiculous. Of course she doesn’t want to shave her head, and, even if she did, why would Ginger want to know that? Margaret feels a sudden strange fear overtake her, and before she can follow the train of thought any farther, she decides to duck out of the party for some air.</p><p>When she makes her way onto the front porch, she finds Hawkeye already there. Hawkeye’s contemplating leaving his bike and just walking home when Margaret comes and sits down beside him.</p><p>“Hello,” she says, staring out straight ahead of her.</p><p>“Yo,” he says, and then fails to spark a conversation. He likes Margaret, but he’s never <em>quite</em> been able to get a read on her. He just doesn’t have the energy right now to really speak to anyone, let alone her.</p><p>Margaret, however, barrels straight ahead into a conversation topic. “I couldn’t find Ginger,” she says.</p><p>“Why were you looking for her?” Hawkeye asks.</p><p>Instead of answering, Margaret says, “Do you think they left without us?”</p><p>“Who?” Hawkeye says, although he can guess what she means.</p><p>“Trapper and Ginger. Do you think they went back to one of our rooms because they knew we wouldn’t be there?”</p><p>“Why shouldn’t they?” Hawkeye says. “They’re just two crazy kids in love. Let ‘em do what they want.”</p><p>At this comment, Margaret almost seems to snap out of how drunk she is, looking at him with more clarity as she says, “Do you think they’re in love?”</p><p><em>I hope not</em>, Hawkeye thinks. “I don’t know,” he says, shrugging, regretting having made the offhand joke. “They’re both young and beautiful. It’s a good way to pass the time.”</p><p>Margaret snorts. “A good way to pass the time.”</p><p>“As good a way as any.”</p><p>“What do you do to pass the time?” she says.</p><p>“What do you mean? I don’t know,” Hawkeye replies. “Same as anybody else. I read. I study. I suffer my little bouts of hysteria.”</p><p>Margaret laughs at this again. “Your little bouts of hysteria. That’s good.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Hawkeye says. “I’ll be here all night.”</p><p>“But do you fall in love?”</p><p><em>I am in love. But I don’t do it just to pass the time, not like Trapper</em>. “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose it’s not for me. Not much time in my schedule. What with the college classes, and the hysteria.” He pauses. He doesn’t know what makes him ask the next question, except that he’s wondering why Margaret’s so drunk, and why she’s out on the front steps with him, and not in the party with the rest of everyone else, and why she was looking for Ginger, and what her relationship with Oliver is, and a million other little things that he can’t articulate but feels on the tip of his tongue. “Do you do it?” he says. “Do you fall in love?”</p><p>She seems to consider the question, for a moment, but the answer she gives him seems to have nothing to do with it. “I wanted to shave my head,” she says.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I wanted to shave my head,” she repeats, then starts laughing. “That’s why I was looking for Ginger. I wanted her to help me shave my head. Can you imagine? Me, with a shaved head. I mean, in this shirt—“ she holds it out, looks down at herself, considering—“in this shirt and everything, and then with the shaved head. I mean, what would people say? They wouldn’t even know I was a girl.” She keeps laughing after she’s said it.</p><p>At first, Hawkeye just looks at her, but when she shows no sign of stopping, he starts laughing too. It feels unexpected, to him—the shirt, the urge to shave her head. The way she says, “They wouldn’t even know I was a girl,” not with anxiety but almost with joy.</p><p>She gives him a shove. “What?” she says. “Are you laughing at me?”</p><p>“You’re laughing at yourself!”</p><p>“It’s different!”</p><p>“You’re different!” Hawkeye says, not because he means anything by it, just because he’s very drunk and it’s an instinctual retort. When he says it, though, Margaret stops laughing. She leans in very close to him, and for a minute, he’s almost worried she’s mad at him, or that she’s going to kiss him, or both.</p><p>Instead, she says, faux-seriously, “How did you know?” Then immediately starts laughing again.</p><p>“I can’t tell you,” Hawkeye says, and resumes laughing too.</p><p>“What’s so funny?” he hears someone say from behind him. He turns to look, and suddenly there’s Ginger, standing on the front steps above them.</p><p>“Ginger!” Hawkeye says. “The woman of the hour!” When Ginger gives him a quizzical look, and Margaret gives him a death glare, he realizes he may have said too much. He decides to play it off as him being drunk, which is easy to do, given how drunk he is. He pats the front step, in-between where he and Margaret are already sitting, and continues, “Come on in, the water’s warm.”</p><p>Ginger sits down in between him and Margaret and immediately reaches out toward Margaret. Now it’s Margaret’s turn to look quizzical; that is, until Ginger reaches into the front pocket of Margaret’s shirt and pulls out a pack of cigarettes.</p><p>“You mean I could have been smoking this whole time?” Margaret says, sounding indignant. “I thought you had them!”</p><p>Ginger laughs. “But I had the lighter.” As she says this, she reaches into her purse and pulls it out. She knocks it against her head then points it at Hawkeye, telling him, “If I hold onto the lighter and Margaret holds onto the cigarettes, we cut down on how much we smoke.”</p><p>“Except when you’re together,” Hawkeye says.</p><p>“Yeah, that’s why we try to spend so much time apart,” Ginger laughs. Hawkeye notices that Margaret says nothing. Ginger, lighting a cigarette for herself, doesn’t seem to pick up on Margaret’s silence. Hawkeye tells himself that he could easily be reading too much into it.</p><p>“Beautiful night,” Ginger says, leaning a little into Margaret to rest on her shoulder. Margaret’s surprised, but tries not to show it; they aren’t usually the touchy-feely type, but Ginger’s probably been drinking as much as any of them.</p><p>“A beautiful night with two beautiful women,” Hawkeye says.</p><p>“Oh, shut up,” Margaret tells him. They are saved from further bickering when Trapper and Oliver come stumbling out onto the porch; well, Trapper stumbles, and Oliver catches him.</p><p>Trapper reaches one of his arms around Oliver’s neck affectionately, holding up his red solo cup with the other, and says, “You are looking at the champions of the night!”</p><p>“Oh, really?” Margaret says. “Champions of what, exactly?”</p><p>“Trapper took over as my partner in beer pong, and we lost,” Oliver says, “but no one tell him that.”</p><p>If Trapper hears what Oliver’s saying, he chooses to ignore it, instead inserting himself in between Ginger and Hawkeye with very little grace. The front steps aren’t big enough for four people to sit on them at once, so Margaret almost goes toppling off the edge. “How about a kiss in honor of tonight’s big win?” Trapper says to Ginger. Ginger, however, has turned away from him to grab Margaret and save her from falling off the edge. Not seeming to notice this, Trapper turns to his other side, where Hawkeye is, and says, “Well, what about one from you, then?”</p><p>Hawkeye feels his face heating up. He’s used to this sort of behavior from Trapper at parties, but Trapper usually waits until they’re alone to act like this. Hawkeye pushes Trapper’s face away from his and says, “Just how drunk <em>are</em> you?”</p><p>“Drunk enough that Waffle House sounds good,” Trapper replies, seemingly unbothered that he still hasn’t gotten a kiss from anyone.</p><p>Hawkeye knows that the Waffle House comment isn’t something Trapper’s invested in; Waffle House is close, and they’ve definitely gone there after parties before, but Trapper’s also the exact kind of drunk where he’ll be equally happy doing almost anything. Trapper’s the kind of drunk where he’ll forget what he says almost as soon as he’s said it. Hawkeye knows the night could easily end here; if he stands up and suggests they leave, everyone will follow suit. Part of him is bone-tired, and doesn’t want to deal with more of Trapper trying to kiss him only after Ginger ignores him.</p><p>But part of him wants to stretch the night out longer, for a lot of reasons. For one, the longer they all stay up, the longer he can put off the question of who Trapper’s going to go home with tonight. Second, he loves Trapper’s drunken, second-hand attention almost as much as he hates it. Trapper’s smile gets even more endearing when he’s drunk, if that’s even possible. And Hawkeye knows how to make him smile, how to make him laugh. He wants to spend an hour or two in a Waffle House at 1 a.m. with Trapper, with his best friend. He wants to spend an hour or two in Waffle House with Oliver, mixing this night in with all his memories of other nights that he and Oliver have stayed up too late and stumbled back into their dorm as it’s getting light.</p><p>Even Ginger and Margaret, who he’s spent less time with – somehow, this group of them ending up back together at the end of the night, just like they started the night, feels right. Besides, he’s not <em>quite</em> as drunk as Trapper seems to be, but he’s still drunk enough that Waffle House sounds pretty fucking good right now. It’s not often that he lets himself feel good without thinking himself back into feeling bad again, so before he can overanalyze the feeling, he starts chanting, “Waffle house! Waffle house!” Ginger, Trapper, and Margaret quickly join in.</p><p>“Pleaaaaase will you drive us to Waffle House?” Hawkeye asks Oliver. Oliver’s the only one of them who owns a car; it’s a jeep, just barely big enough to fit five people in it, if they utilize its ridiculous little back seat.</p><p>Oliver rolls his eyes. “You’re all lucky I stayed sober for practice tomorrow,” he tells them. “And that it’s late enough that Waffle House sounds good to me, even sober. I’m parked in J Lot.”</p><p>“J lot,” everyone groans. It’s about as far from where they are now as anything on campus.</p><p>“Hey, I don’t <em>have</em> to drive us to Waffle House if you don’t want me to,” Oliver says.</p><p>“No, we definitely want to,” Trapper says, and the five of them get up to continue their night together.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank you to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/horaetio/pseuds/horaetio">horaetio</a> for beta reading &lt;333 Also because I got this question after the first chapter, this is kind of set in the 1950s but also kind of not. It's set in a made-up version of the 1950s where they have modern pop music and only enough homophobia for everyone overcoming their own internalized homophobia to be sexy.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The five of them pile into the jeep. Margaret calls shotgun, leaving Trapper, Hawkeye, and Ginger to climb over the front seat and into the pint-sized back seat. Trapper, of course, takes the middle, resting his head on Ginger’s shoulder but sprawling out, so his legs tangle with Hawkeye’s. Margaret turns on the radio, and “Distraction” comes on the radio. <em>I need you / To not wanna be mine / Are you down to be a distraction baby?</em> Kehlani sings. In the front seat, Margaret turns the radio up until it’s nearly blasting Hawkeye’s eardrums out. She and Oliver roll their windows down and both start car-dancing to the song, trying to shout along with it in a way that makes it clear that neither of them <em>really</em> know the words. In the backseat, Hawkeye stiffens a little at the lyrics, doing his best to avoid looking at either Ginger or Trapper. Mercifully, the Waffle House is so close to campus that the arrive before they even get to the end of the song.</p><p>However, the booth presents just as much of a problem as the backseat. Margaret and Oliver, having gotten out of the car first, slide into one side of the booth. Ginger and Trapper slide into the other side. Hawkeye goes to sit next to Oliver, but Trapper reaches out and grabs at his sleeve, wordlessly asking Hawkeye to sit next to him instead. Hawkeye can swear he feels Ginger, Oliver, <em>and</em> Margaret all staring at the point of contact between himself and Trapper, but he can’t tell if he’s just being paranoid. In a moment of panic, and unsure whether Trapper (drunk as he is) will make even more of a scene about it if Hawkeye <em>doesn’t</em> sit next to him, Hawkeye slides in next to him. This time, he’s <em>certain</em> Oliver gives him a pointed eyebrow raise, but Hawkeye ignores it.</p><p>As soon as Hawkeye sits down, Trapper leans into Ginger, snuggling into her shoulder, and puts his feet in Hawkeye’s lap. Hawkeye rolls his eyes, trying to remove Trapper’s feet from his lap, but Trapper sits up and says indignantly, “Hey, where the hell do you want I should put my feet? The table?”</p><p>“You could put them on the <em>floor</em>, like everybody else,” Hawkeye says, too drunk and exasperated to snap back some witty remark. But he lets Trapper keep his feet in his lap. Ginger is studying her menu with the specific serious that only the very drunk afford laminated diner menus. </p><p>Margaret and Oliver, meanwhile, are having a hunched over one menu, having a very earnest little conference over what to order. “Well I want waffles and the eggs,” Margaret tells Oliver. “If I get waffles, will you get the steak and eggs, and we can split them?”</p><p>“But what <em>kind</em> of eggs do you want?” he asks her. “You always want over easy, and you know I hate runny yolks.”</p><p>“I don’t see what the <em>point</em> of eating an egg is if you aren’t going to let the yolk run into your hash browns,” Margaret tells him, looking so affronted by Oliver’s egg preference that Hawkeye almost bursts out laughing.</p><p>“I’ll split it with you,” Ginger says suddenly, looking up from her menu.</p><p>“Oh? Really?” Margaret says, looking surprised. <em>Aren’t you two literally roommates?</em> Hawkeye thinks. He has time to observe all this, because he and Trapper don’t need to discuss their order. Hawkeye always gets waffles, and Trapper always gets steak and eggs, and they get a large side of hash browns, and they share it all. It’s true that the Waffle House menu isn’t very extensive, and it makes sense to split your order with someone this way if you want to maximize sweet/savory potential. But Hawkeye can’t help feeling stupidly sentimental over it anyway, over the way Trapper doesn’t even have to check about their order because it’s what they’ve always gotten, for years.</p><p>Margaret, however, seems almost <em>shy</em> at the thought of sharing greasy diner food with her roommate of two years. Hawkeye doesn’t have time to dwell on it, though, because their waitress comes back over and takes their order. Trapper, Hawkeye, and Oliver all order coffees, even though it’s nearing 1 am. </p><p>“I can’t believe you three are drinking caffeine at this hour,” Margaret says.</p><p>“What?” Trapper says. “I still have a lot on the agenda for the night.”</p><p>“Yeah?” Margaret says sourly. “Like what, exactly? We just <em>left</em> a party.”</p><p>“I don’t want to say in the company of ladies,” Trapper says, giving Hawkeye a little wink. Hawkeye tries not to let himself dwell on just what, exactly, Trapper means by the wink. Tries not to wonder if it means Trapper wants to go home with him tonight, or if it’s just that with the angle Trapper is leaning into Ginger, Hawkeye was the easiest one to wink at in the moment.</p><p>Margaret rolls her eyes. “Well I, for one, am going to get some sleep, so I can get up and study tomorrow.”</p><p>“Margaret,” Hawkeye says, “we are, all five of us, currently drunk at a waffle house at 1 am. There are no high horses in sight onto which we might climb aboard.”</p><p>“Hey, I’m sober,” Oliver says.</p><p>“Sober at a waffle house at 1 am is an even more unforgivable thing,” Hawkeye tells Oliver, and Oliver laughs.</p><p>“Who needs to study?” Trapper says. “I’ll study over spring break.”</p><p>“No, you won’t,” Hawkeye snorts.</p><p>Trapper reaches out and swats Hawkeye on the shoulder. “Let me have my illusions.” He pauses, then sits up a little, putting his feet down on the floor and pulling away from Ginger a bit at the same time. “Hey, what <em>are</em> we doing for spring break?” As he asks the questions, he sort of looks around at everybody at once.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Margaret says, systematically and thoughtlessly ripping her napkin to pieces, “Are <em>we</em> doing anything?”</p><p>“Sure,” Trapper says, like it’s that easy. “I mean, don’t tell me you guys had other plans,” he adds, almost affronted, as if he isn’t conjuring some hair-brained Spring Break trip out of thin air right this minute.</p><p>Margaret shrugs, looking down at her partially shredded napkin. “I mean, my parents are still off in Europe somewhere, so me and Lorraine were probably just going to hang around campus like usual.”</p><p>“Come on, that’s no fun,” Trapper says. “I’m much more fun than her, I promise.”</p><p>“Oh, are you?” Margaret asks, in what Hawkeye swears is a purposefully flirtatious way, leaning forward toward Trapper a little.</p><p>Trapper gives her a little wink, but then immediately turns to Ginger, wrapping his arm affectionately around her and saying, “What are you doing?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Ginger says. “Kellye and I were gonna figure something out.”</p><p>“Trapper,” Oliver says, “do I need to remind you that we both have training all week?” Oliver and Trapper are both on the track team to stay in shape for when football season rolls back around, although Trapper rarely tends to go to practices.</p><p>“Oh, come on,” Trapper says. “What is the coach gonna do if we skip out? Kick us off the team? It’s <em>spring break</em>.”</p><p>“He might,” Oliver says.</p><p>“Not if… I mean, if we both skip out, isn’t that kind of unionizing?”</p><p>“I don’t think you understand how unions work at all,” Oliver laughs.</p><p>Trapper doesn’t ask Hawkeye if he has any plans because Hawkeye already told him a few weeks ago, very casually, that he was planning to hang around campus. Something about how there was nothing to do back in Crabapple anyway. He knew Trapper would probably stick around for track, and there’s no one Hawkeye wants to hang around with for a whole week who <em>isn’t</em> Trapper.</p><p>“Look at all of us! Planning to spend our break <em>studying</em> and <em>running</em>, when we should be spending it day drinking! Pathetic.”</p><p>“You know,” Oliver says, leaning in conspiratorially, “My parents <em>do</em> have a house out on the coast.”</p><p>“A house on the coast! This guy has a house on the coast that he’s been holding out on us for years!” Trapper says loudly. Luckily, everyone else at Waffle House at 1 am is being pretty much equally as drunkenly loud. He seems to remember himself a little, though, and asks Oliver politely, “Is that an invitation?”</p><p>“Sure, why the hell not?” Oliver says.</p><p>“Oliver, I could kiss you!” Trapper says.</p><p>“Go ahead and do it,” Oliver laughs.</p><p>“If I wasn’t too drunk to make it all the way over there across the table, I would.”</p><p>“I’ll take a rain check, then,” Oliver says.</p><p>Their food arrives not long after that. Hawkeye and Trapper share their plates in the unspoken way of theirs, reaching over and around each other to grab pieces; arguing, sometimes, when one of them goes for a bite that the other wanted; and occasionally even feeding each other. Margaret and Ginger, on the other hand, are almost overly polite about how they split their plates, both of them carefully sliding half their food onto the other’s plate, something which, given their drunken state and the involvement of over-easy eggs, nearly results in disaster.</p><p>By the time they’ve finished eating, it’s clear that everyone is crashing. “Alright, where am I dropping everyone?” Oliver says as he starts his car.</p><p>“How ‘bout ya carry me up the stairs straight into bed?” Trapper says, with a little grin.</p><p>“Is that an invitation?” Oliver says, echoing Trapper’s question from earlier.</p><p>“Oh, fuck,” Hawkeye interrupts, jabbing Trapper in the shoulder. “We left our bikes at the party.” He is, he has to admit, somewhat glad for the excuse to interrupt Oliver and Trapper flirting. He’s pretty sure Oliver is on the straight and narrow, and he doesn’t think Trapper’s too serious about it either, but. There’s something about seeing Trapper flirt with other <em>guys</em> that’s almost worse than watching him flirt with girls.</p><p>“Can’t we just go back for them tomorrow?” Trapper whines.</p><p>“We’re going to be hungover tomorrow,” Hawkeye says. That’s part of why he wants to get the bikes now. The other part is that, maybe if he gets Trapper alone, Trapper will decide to spend the night with him, instead of biking over to Ginger’s.</p><p>“We don’t know that,” Trapper says.</p><p>“Good old Schrodinger’s hangover,” says Oliver.</p><p>“Come on. It’ll be good for us,” Hawkeye says. “Night air. Drop us back in the parking lot of the party, huh, Oliver?”</p><p>“I actually don’t know if I trust you two to bike home. I should really get a bike rack for this jeep. They definitely wouldn’t fit in the trunk.”</p><p>“Aw, it’s just across campus,” Trapper says. Now that Oliver doesn’t think he should do it, Trapper’s suddenly all in for biking.</p><p>“They’ll be fine,” Margaret says. Hawkeye swears he hears something in her tone of voice, almost like she’s also invested in the outcome where Hawkeye and Trapper get dropped off separately, for some reason.</p><p>“Fine, fine,” Oliver says.</p><p>Margaret’s not sure why she wants Trapper and Hawkeye getting out of the jeep before her and Ginger. Ginger never brings Trapper back to their room when Margaret’s there, so it’s not like she needs to try and avoid that. But Trapper and Hawkeye getting out to bike home means it’s less likely Ginger will go back to his room. Why should Margaret care about that?</p><p>Why should she care about sharing a cigarette with Ginger? Why did she want to find Ginger so badly at the party? Why does it matter to her now, the thought up making her way drunkenly up the stairs with Ginger and maybe staying up and talking and giggling in their dorm room together, when they’ll be able to talk tomorrow morning, or tomorrow night, or any other time after that?</p><p>Well, Margaret suspects she knows the answer. It’s because she’s fallen, head over heels, for her roommate. Her roommate who’s sleeping with her friend. She’s drunk enough that she can’t ignore this fact or the stupidity of it. She’s drunk enough that she feels she needs to plan for what’s ahead (the walk up the stairs to their dorm room, the going to sleep in different beds) so she doesn’t say or do something stupid. <em>Maybe I’ll just say nothing the whole way up the stairs. No, then she’ll think I’m mad at her. Maybe I’ll say I have a headache, so she won’t think it’s weird if I’m quiet. Maybe we could sit on her bed and smoke another cigarette together, and I could be very careful that our knees don’t touch and then go to bed.</em> She’s so caught up in trying to think her little drunken plans through that she doesn’t realize they’ve arrived in the parking lot outside Lorraine’s until Trapper leans over and taps her on the shoulder.</p><p>“Sorry,” she says. She hops down, pulling up the seat so Trapper and Hawkeye can climb out. Standing there in the cold night air, she tries to empty out her head, but it doesn’t really work. As Trapper and Hawkeye make their way over to their bikes, talking and laughing, Margaret goes to get back in the passenger’s seat. She’s so drunk and tired that Oliver ends up having to lean over and half pull her up into the car.</p><p>“Thanks,” Margaret says, but she doesn’t add anything after that. Out of the corner of her eye, Margaret can see Ginger in the back seat, staring out after Hawkeye and Trapper, even as they fade into the distance as the jeep continues down the road. Margaret tries not to wonder just what, exactly, Ginger’s thinking about. Margaret sees Oliver glancing over at her, a question in his eyes, but she can’t tell him anything about what’s on her mind—not with Ginger right there in the car with them—so Margaret just reaches over and turns the radio back up. It’s late enough that the station is playing some wordless club song, the kind Margaret usually hates, but for now, she’s glad for any excuse not to have to talk.</p><p>When they pull into the parking lot outside her dorm, though, after she and Ginger have climbed out, and she’s preparing to try and end the night as gracefully as she can, Oliver leans over and says, “Hey, Margaret, wait, I have a question for you.”</p><p>Ginger, who was about to shut the passenger side’s door, hesitates, giving Margaret a questioning look.</p><p>“You don’t have to wait for me,” Margaret says. “I’ll be up in a minute.”</p><p>“Okay,” Ginger says, shrugging a little. “Night, Oliver,” she adds, giving him a little wave. Then she turns and disappears into the dorm.</p><p>Margaret stands in the parking lot in front of the jeep, hand on her hip, looking up at Oliver. “What?” she says defensively.</p><p>Oliver raises his eyebrows at her. “Nothing. Just… are you all good?”</p><p>“Yes,” Margaret says. “Why wouldn’t I be?”</p><p>“I don’t know. Just… wanting to shave your head, earlier tonight? Running around after Ginger? And then you were pretty quiet at the diner.”</p><p>“Are you telling me I <em>shouldn’t</em> shave my head?” Margaret says, although he’s right, and she shouldn’t. But she doesn’t want him to tell her that.</p><p>“I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I’m just wondering if you want to talk about it any more, or anything. Is all.” Oliver pauses. “Look, why don’t you climb back up in here? You don’t need to stand there in the parking lot.”</p><p>“What if I want to go to bed?”</p><p>“Then you can go to bed,” Oliver says, so easily that Margaret sighs and climbs back into the passenger’s seat, this time obstinately refusing an arm up. After she shuts the door, but stares straight ahead, not saying anything, Oliver says, “So.”</p><p>“Oliver, I…” Margaret hesitates. She’s drunk, and he’s sober, and she’s worried if she decides to tell him anything of importance now, she’ll regret it in the morning, or that it’ll come out all wrong. But she also knows that if she waits till tomorrow to tell him everything that’s on her mind, she won’t say anything at all. And she’s tired of trying to think this all through herself. She knows if she tells him that she’s… that’s she’s a lesbian, about her crush on Ginger, about how that somehow connects back to wanting to shave her head for reasons she hasn’t fully begun to untangle yet—she knows he probably won’t have any constructive advice to offer. But she’s worried she just might lose her mind if she doesn’t say anything, especially now that they seem to have all agreed to spend a week in a beach house together.</p><p>“I don’t… you know I’ve kind of dated around, but it’s never really seemed to stick?” Margaret says.</p><p>“Yeah,” Oliver says.</p><p>“Well I… I mean, I think there’s a reason for that. I mean… I’m not really interested in the type of people I used to see.”</p><p>“No offense, Margaret, but that doesn’t really surprise me. I mean, the crew cuts and square jaws, and how none of them can take a joke?”</p><p>“They could take a—okay, that’s not the point. The point is…” But she finds herself trailing off, scared to finish the sentence.</p><p>“There’s someone else, now, isn’t there?” Oliver asks. Margaret looks over at him, then, sharply, surprised that he’s picked up on it.</p><p>“Yes…” she says, carefully, feeling like she’s standing on the precipice of something, aware that she won’t be able to turn back around once she takes another step forward.</p><p>“It must be hard seeing Trapper with Ginger,” Oliver says, and Margaret feels her face flush, worried she’s been giving it all away this whole time, after all. But then Oliver continues, “Don’t get me wrong, though, I think he’d be a step up from your exes, but I’m still not sure he’s the type you want to go getting involved with. I mean, he is my friend, and he’s sweet and all, but as far as—“</p><p>But Oliver doesn’t get a chance to finish talking, because Margaret bursts out laughing. Oliver looks over at her, clearly confused, having thought they were in the middle of a heart to heart. “Wait, so that’s not—“ he starts.</p><p>“No,” Margaret says. “Trapper? God, no.” She has to admit, there is a certain appeal to him. He’s so god damn charismatic, and he’s got a great smile. He’s definitely her, “If I had to choose a guy” backburner. But the absurdity of Oliver thinking they were going to have a <em>heart to heart</em> over how torn up she is to see Trapper with someone else is—well, she can’t help laughing.</p><p>“So, who, then?” Oliver says. “Not Hawkeye…”</p><p>“No, not Hawkeye,” Margaret says, then quickly adds, “And not you, either,” before things have the chance to become extremely awkward.</p><p>“So who, then?” Oliver says. “Some guy at the party?”</p><p>“Someone at the party,” Margaret says.</p><p>“Some—someone,” Oliver says, realization dawning on his face.</p><p>“I’m gay,” Margaret says. “It’s not some guy, it’s—it’s some girl.”</p><p>“Oh,” Oliver says. “I mean—that makes sense.”</p><p>“It makes sense?!” Margaret says.</p><p>“Do you <em>not</em> want it to make sense?”</p><p>“I don’t know, I just… it’s new for me, so it’s… I mean, if everyone else has known this whole time, it’s like… well, it’s embarrassing that I didn’t know, and—“</p><p>“Margaret, Margaret,” Oliver says, before she can continue. “I didn’t know. I promise you. Remember how I just asked if you had a crush on Trapper? It’s just… knowing you, now that you’re telling me this… it just makes sense to me, is all.”</p><p>“Okay,” Margaret says, calming down a little. “Okay.” She sits there for a minute, working up the courage to add that it’s Ginger she has a crush on, to talk to Oliver about just how insane it is that they’re all going to go to the beach house together.</p><p>But before she can speak, Oliver asks, “So is that—I mean, the pants? The men’s shirts? The wanting to shave your head?”</p><p>“I guess so,” Margaret says.</p><p>“I mean, if it’s not—I—“</p><p>“No, no, I think it is,” Margaret says. “I don’t know. I don’t even know <em>why</em> I want to shave my head so badly. It just feels like something I have to do. But I don’t—“</p><p>“I think you should,” Oliver says then, surprising her. “If you want to, I think you should.”</p><p>“You think so?” Margaret says. “But what will people…”</p><p>“Fuck ‘em,” Oliver says. Margaret laughs. He continues, “Come on, when have you cared what other people think?”</p><p>“Oliver, every day I care what people think.”</p><p>“Well then… you know, maybe it would be good. To shave your head. I bet you would look good.”</p><p>“Thanks, Oliver,” Margaret says. She considers telling him, now, about Ginger. It would be the perfect time. Get it all out there at once. But she’s so relieved at how well the conversation has gone so far that she doesn’t want to chance messing the night up now. She doesn’t want to have to listen to Oliver tell her how Ginger’s doing… whatever it is she’s doing with Trapper, and how saying anything right before they all go away on vacation is stupid. She doesn’t want to listen to him tell her that telling your roommate you’re into them has the potential to go very, very south very, very quickly.</p><p>But still, she stays in his car for just a minute longer. It’s not just that he’s got the heat way up, and she knows she’ll be cold as she runs the short distance from his car to her dorm. It’s also that they’ve done this a million times, a million different ways, at this point. Driven around in his car. Stayed in the parking lot talking after everyone else has already gone off to bed. But each time, it still feels somehow delicate. She remembers when they first met, back when she was unsure if Oliver or Hawkeye or Trapper would like her. Part of her still feels like she has to win him over, even sitting here in his car like this.</p><p>She still remembers the first time it was just the two of them in his car. It was a Friday afternoon, when they’d been supposed to hang out with Trapper and Hawkeye, per usual. But Trapper and Hawkeye had run out of weed and, not being able to find Francis anywhere, had gone off to track him down. As they’d left the cafeteria table, Oliver had turned to Margaret and said, “Well, you wanna go get milkshakes or something anyway?”</p><p>He’d been quieter that week, and, when they got to the parking lot and into his car, Margaret had been surprised when Oliver had started telling her about a girl from one of his classes. She can’t even remember the girl’s name, now, but Oliver had been torn up about it at the time, having spent months flirting with her, only to learn she had a boyfriend. Margaret had been surprised, in the moment, that he’d chosen to confide in her, of all people. To this day, she doesn’t know if he realized, sooner than she did, what good friends they would become, or if was simply that she was the one that was there on that Friday afternoon. But in either case, even after he’d brushed it off and was smiling and joking over milkshakes half an hour later, something about him trusting her that afternoon had cemented their friendship. They’d been close ever since then.</p><p>So Margaret knows she could tell him about Ginger, that he’d be nice to her about it, even if he thought it were wild. But something beyond the dynamics of her friendship with him—something about all the other people in her life, all the times she’s been laughed at, or it’s turned out that she’s cared more than the other person—makes her hold back. Makes her say nothing more than, “Well, I guess I should go.”</p><p>“It’s getting pretty late,” Oliver agrees.</p><p>“Thanks again for the ride,” Margaret says.</p><p>“Any time,” he tells her, and she knows, despite her worries, that he means it.</p><p>***</p><p>Trapper and Hawkeye stumble out of the car and towards their bikes. Hawkeye feels a nervous thrumming in his chest, the realization that the moment of truth for the night is fast approaching, when it will become clear whether or not Trapper wants to spend the night with him or not. He wants to say something. He wants to say, <em>Take me home.</em> Actually, what he wants, more than anything, is for Trapper to ask, <em>Want me to take you home, honey?</em> But he knows that won’t happen.</p><p>So instead he says, very carefully, very casually, “What’re we doing with the rest of our night, huh?”</p><p>“What are my odds of getting you back to my place?” Trapper says, smiling, as he climbs onto his bike. “I’m pretty sure Francis is still out for the night.”</p><p>“I’d say they’re pretty high,” Hawkeye says.</p><p>They don’t talk most of the bike back to Trapper’s dorm. They sing, a little bit, passing the melody back and forth, the words mostly getting swallowed up by the wind. They make their way up to Trapper’s dorm room, and Trapper pulls Hawkeye in for a kiss even as he’s still closing the door behind them. Hawkeye feels almost dizzy with want, but there’s a fear underneath it too—Francis is probably still out partying, but he could very well be in the room. Hawkeye pushes Trapper back, just a little, whispering, “Come on, let’s make sure Francis isn’t here.”</p><p>“He isn’t here, honey,” Trapper says, going to kiss Hawkeye again, but when he realizes that Hawkeye’s still on edge, he sighs, turning on the lights. And indeed, Hawkeye sees Francis’ bed, still empty.</p><p>The ridiculous thing of it all is, Trapper’s the one who would care if they got found out. Hawkeye’s not exactly going around telling everyone he’s gay, but he’s not exactly hiding it, either. Trapper, on the other hand—as much as he flirts with Hawkeye (and Oliver) in public, Hawkeye knows it’s a different sort of performance that Trapper’s putting on. He’s known Trapper long enough to realize just how much fear there is underneath all his bravado. Hawkeye wants to protect Trapper (and himself) from any potential fallout from an unplanned coming out. </p><p>But Hawkeye doesn’t have time to dwell on this for long, because, having proved to Hawkeye that no one else is in the room, Trapper turns out the light and pulls Hawkeye to bed, to pick up right where they left off.</p><p>Afterwards, lying in that little twin bed of Trapper’s, one that would be uncomfortable to share with anyone else except him, Trapper surprises Hawkeye by reaching over him, to his bedside table, and grabbing something off it—it’s some sort of crochet project. Back when they were kids, living in a tiny New England town with nothing to do, Hawkeye got so bored he taught himself how to knit, just have something to do during Winter, something to occupy his hands. Trapper never really had as much patience for it as Hawkeye, but Hawkeye taught him how to crochet when they were about seventeen. Trapper had stuck with it for about a year or two, before seemingly giving it up in college.</p><p>But now here he is, with some sort of project half completed. “How do you like it?” Trapper says, holding it up.</p><p>“Trap, I can barely see it,” Hawkeye tells him. There’s a little light coming in the window from the streetlight below, as well as the moon, but not enough for Hawkeye to tell what the incomplete project is.</p><p>“It’s a hat,” Trapper says, trying to put it on Hawkeye’s head, even though it’s not nearly complete enough for him to get a sense of if it will fit or not. “It’s for you.”</p><p>“For me?” Hawkeye says.</p><p>“Yeah,” Trapper says. “You know, if it turns out badly, it’ll go with that lopsided smile of yours.”</p><p>“I don’t have a lopsided smile,” Hawkeye says.</p><p>“Yeah you do,” Trapper says. “I can see it right now.”</p><p>“You can’t see shit,” Hawkeye says, but he keeps smiling, despite himself. The way Trapper said it, “lopsided smile,” it was with so much affection that Hawkeye can’t be mad about it.</p><p>“I can see everything,” Trapper says. “I’ve got eyes like a wolf.”</p><p>“Like a wolf?” Hawkeye says, laughing.</p><p>“Yeah,” Trapper says indignantly. “They have that shit in their eyes so they can see at night.”</p><p>“ ‘That shit in their eyes?’” Hawkeye says.</p><p>“Yeah,” Trapper says. “You know. Night vision, or whatever.”</p><p>“Night vision.”</p><p>“Lots of animals have it. Wolves. Coyotes. Cats.”</p><p>“I’m pretty sure they just open their eyes wider at night, or something,” Hawkeye says. “And it lets more light in, so they can see better than us. I don’t think they have ‘shit in their eyes’ that makes them see better.”</p><p>“But do you know for sure?” Trapper says.</p><p>“No,” Hawkeye sighs. “I guess not.”</p><p>“Hey,” Trapper says, “this trip to the beach house is gonna be good, right?”</p><p>“Sure,” Hawkeye says. “We’re all gonna hang out together like one big happy family.”</p><p>“Are you telling me we’re not?”</p><p>“No, it’s gonna be great.” Hawkeye now regrets that they’re not both already asleep by now, and are instead having this conversation.</p><p>“Do you…” Trapper starts, then seems to think better of whatever it was he was about to say, and says, “You know it’s different with Ginger, right?”</p><p>“What’s different?”</p><p>“Don’t play dumb. It’s different. With me and her, than with me and you.”</p><p>“Well, yeah, I imagine it would be.”</p><p>“That’s not what I mean.”</p><p>“What <em>do</em> you mean?” Hawkeye asks. He likes it better when they don’t talk about things like this. When Trapper doesn’t try to make it better.</p><p>“I just mean…” Trapper trails off. “Aw, forget it. Forget I said anything.”</p><p>“I’m gonna come to the beach house, Trap. And I’m gonna have a good time. We’re gonna have a good time.”</p><p>“Okay. Okay,” Trapper says. He lies down, then, goes to sleep without saying goodnight. Hawkeye, though, lays awake a long while more. Thinking about the hat, about the beach house, about Ginger, despite doing his absolute best to think about nothing at all.</p><p>***</p><p>When Margaret finally gets out of Oliver’s jeep and makes her way up to her dorm, she fully expects Ginger to be asleep. To her surprise, though, as she closes the door behind her, she hears Ginger say, “Margaret?”</p><p>“It’s me,” Margaret says.</p><p>“I know,” Ginger says. Margaret can’t see Ginger, with her side of the room hidden as it is behind the screen. “Do you… I’m not tired yet. Are you?”</p><p>Margaret is, to tell the truth, incredibly tired. Almost nothing sounds better than sinking into bed right now. Almost nothing.</p><p>Margaret goes over to Ginger’s side of the room and peaks her head cautiously around the screen. Ginger’s in bed, but she’s sitting up, her robe on over her pajamas. “Well, what are you waiting for? Come over here and keep me company,” Ginger says. Margaret hesitates just a second more, but, unable to come up with any excuse not to, she walks over and sits on the edge of Ginger’s bed, resting her chin on her knees and wrapping her arms around her legs.</p><p>“What do you want to talk about?” Margaret says. She feels ridiculous even as she says it, but she’s drunk and it’s past one, and she’s lost all sense of social graces by now.</p><p>Luckily, Ginger seems to find the question charming, and laughs. She leans over her bed, looking for something underneath it. Finally, she sits back up with a cassette player and a tape. “Do you wanna listen to something?”</p><p>“This late?” Margaret says. “I think the people above us might complain.”</p><p>“Oh, it’s Friday night,” Ginger says. “They’re probably still out partying. I’ll play it quietly, anyway.” Before Margaret can protest, Ginger’s sticking the tape into the cassette already. <em>I get up in the evening / And I ain't got nothing to say / I come home in the morning / I go to bed feeling the same way</em>, Bruce Springsteen sings. Ginger’s got it down so low that Margaret has to move closer to really hear what it is he’s singing.</p><p>Ginger holds the small pink cassette player out between them, and Margaret feels like they’re two kids up past their bedtime, holding a flashlight between them and telling stories. The song really feels like that, the center of a light that’s emanating throughout the room. Margaret wonders if Ginger does this a lot; if she puts on headphones and listens to this song by herself late at night, behind the screen. Margaret wonders why Ginger’s decided to play the song for her now. But she doesn’t ask. She doesn’t want to say anything, doesn’t want to break the moment apart into conversation.</p><p>After a minute, however, Ginger speaks up. “You looked good tonight.”</p><p>“What?” Margaret replies, although she heard Ginger just fine.</p><p>“In that shirt and everything, I mean,” Ginger says. Margaret looks down at her oversized Hawaiian shirt. Before she can say anything else, Ginger adds, “I tried to find you tonight, at the party.”</p><p>“I tried to find <em>you</em>!” Margaret says, before she can stop herself.</p><p>“I wanted to see the grand shirt debut,” Ginger says. “Wait, why were you looking for <em>me</em>?”</p><p>Margaret blushes. Drunk as she is, telling one person that she wants to shave her head feels like enough for the night. So instead, she says, “I don’t know. I just—I wanted to play beer pong with you.”</p><p>Ginger gives her a kind of funny look, then, but she smiles. “I’m no good at beer pong.”</p><p>“I know,” Margaret says. “It would’ve been more of challenge, that way. Playing with Oliver all the time’s getting too easy.”</p><p>Ginger laughs. “Well, maybe next time.” She pauses, then adds, “Do you really think I look all that good in that blue dress of mine?”</p><p>Margaret thinks back to before the party, when she tried to convince Ginger to wear her blue dress, and blushes. “I think you look good in everything,” she says, which only makes her blush more. It comes out differently than she’d thought it would, not at all the cool, calm, and evasive answer she’d hoped it would be.</p><p>“I’m surprised you even remember that one,” Ginger says. “It’s been months since I wore it. Last time must’ve been…”</p><p>“Lorraine’s Halloween party,” Margaret says. She remembers, because Ginger had gone a little too hard pre-gaming and started complaining that she was tired half an hour after they’d arrived at the party. Trapper, Oliver, and Hawkeye had said they’d meet Ginger and Margaret there, but hadn’t showed, and Margaret had begged Ginger to stay, so she wouldn’t have to be there alone. Ginger had agreed, only she’d decided the best compromise was to sort of drape herself on Margaret the whole night, arms around her waist, head on her shoulder, leaning into her as Margaret talked to acquaintances of theirs and tried to keep her pulse steady.</p><p>“Oh, yeah,” Ginger says now. “Halloween. I hardly remember that party. I was so drunk. Probably had more fun that night than I did tonight, though.”</p><p>Margaret tries not to read too much into the statement. “Did you not have fun tonight?”</p><p>Ginger shrugs. “It was the same old, same old.”</p><p>“Same old party, or same old Trapper?”</p><p>Ginger laughs. “Both.”</p><p>“I thought you liked him.”</p><p>“I do,” Ginger says. “I just… I don’t know. It’s getting old, or something. He’s fun. But that’s it. I don’t feel like it’s going anywhere.”</p><p>“Do you want it to go somewhere?”</p><p>“Not really,” Ginger says. “I mean, when I met him, I really just wanted to have fun. And now I’ve had fun. And I think maybe I want… something else.”</p><p>“You want to have no fun at all,” Margaret says, faking deep sincerity. Ginger laughs. Margaret then makes her hair into a mustache and says, “Well, good news for you is that I’m no fun at all.”</p><p>Ginger laughs more. “And your mustache is supposed to convince me of that?”</p><p>“It’s a professorial look,” Margaret says. “Very serious.”</p><p>“Well, maybe I’ll put on that blue dress sometime, and we can go out and have absolutely no fun at all.”</p><p>“It’s a date,” Margaret says, the words once again out of her mouth before she has time to think them through.</p><p>But Ginger just smiles. “It’s a date,” she says, and then they both get quiet, listening to the music again. <em>This gun's for hire,</em> Bruce sings, <em>Even if we're just dancing in the dark.</em></p><p>After a little while, Ginger starts to nod off, and Margaret gets up and creeps back into her own bed. The next morning, when she peeks her head around the divider to ask Ginger if she wants to grab breakfast, she sees Ginger still asleep, cassette player in hand.</p><p>***</p><p>Hawkeye wakes up early the next morning, so he can sneak out before Francis gets up. To tell the truth, Hawkeye is pretty sure that Francis is onto them by now and just looks the other way. Hawkeye isn’t about to risk it, though.</p><p>Hawkeye heads back to his dorm. He’s more wobbly on his bike this morning, hung over, than he was last night, drunk; he makes it through the ride by picturing how nice it’ll be to fall back into bed and sleep another few hours at least. But when he opens the door to his dorm, trying to be as quiet as possible, in order not to wake Oliver, Oliver surprises him by saying, “Hey.”</p><p>Hawkeye nearly jumps out of his skin. “Hey,” he says back, after he’s calmed down and shut the door behind him. “I thought for sure you’d still be asleep,” Hawkeye says.</p><p>“I’d like to be,” Oliver tells him, “but I forgot to shut my blinds last night, and the sun woke me up bright and early.” He pauses, then says, “And just what, exactly, are <em>you</em> doing creeping back in here at six a.m.? Did you crash at Trapper’s again?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Hawkeye says. Hawkeye has long given Oliver the almost-not-a-lie excuse of crashing at Trapper’s either because of being too drunk or too tired to bike all the way back to their dorm.</p><p>“Well,” Oliver says, “I was going to head over to the dining hall and get some breakfast, if you wanted to come.”</p><p>“Seems like just a few hours ago that we last ate breakfast,” Hawkeye says, alluding to their late-night Waffle House trip. “But I will take some coffee.” He knows that now that he’s stood here talking to Oliver for a few minutes, his brain won’t let him get back to sleep.</p><p>Once he and Oliver are settled in a corner of the cafeteria, Hawkeye with coffee, Oliver with coffee and a full plate of food, Hawkeye says, “Regretting inviting us all to your beach house for spring break yet?”</p><p>“Hey, <em>I</em> wasn’t drinking last night,” Oliver says.</p><p>“I know,” Hawkeye says. “I just… I hope you don’t feel like Trapper invited us all over there, or something. I hope you don’t feel obligated.”</p><p>Oliver gives Hawkeye a funny look. “Hey, I offered up the beach house. I don’t think he even knew that was on the table until I said something.”</p><p>“I know,” Hawkeye says. “I just…” He shrugs. He’s not sure what it is he’s trying to say.</p><p>Oliver’s still giving Hawkeye that same look. “You know you guys are, like, some of my closest friends, right? Remember when you and I chose to live together multiple years in a row?”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, I remember,” Hawkeye says. Maybe this thing with Trapper has been messing with his head more than he wants to admit. Maybe the insecurity is bleeding into other relationships. He tries to play his neurosis off as a joke, saying, “I don’t know, I thought maybe you just kept me around cause I do such a good job of picking up after you, keeping the room all neat and tidy.”</p><p>But Oliver, usually always game for a joke, doesn’t play along. “I like you, Hawkeye,” he says. “You know that, right?”</p><p>“Yeah, sure,” Hawkeye says, looking down at his cup of coffee. “I like you too, but you’re gonna make me blush.”</p><p>“<em>You</em> want to come to the beach house, right?”</p><p>“Me? Yeah.”</p><p>“There’s not… I mean, you and Trapper are all good, right?”</p><p>“Of course we’re good,” Hawkeye says. “We’re always good. Why wouldn’t we be good?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Oliver says. “No reason, I guess.”</p><p>“Next week is gonna be good,” Hawkeye says. “We’re gonna go to the beach house, get drunk off our asses, and respect the beautiful space that I’m sure your parents cultivated and not trash the place even a little.”</p><p>Oliver laughs. “Sounds like a plan.” Hawkeye tries not to dwell on the fact that this is the second time he’s reassured someone in the past twelve hours that everything at the beach house is gonna go smoothly. This bodes fine. <em>It’ll be good</em>, he tells himself. <em>Why wouldn’t it be?</em> He takes another swig of coffee and leans in to change the conversation with Oliver, pushing aside everything telling him the week ahead could go anything other than well.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for reading, comments and kudos are appreciated &lt;333 Next chapter should be up within the next month or two. Hopefully within the next month, but juggling work/my other long ongoing fic/etc, we shall see. Love and light</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading!! As always, kudos and comments are greatly appreciated ❤︎ I expect that this fic will update about once a month, since I'm still working on my BJ/Hawkeye fic at the same time lol. Very excited for where this one is going though!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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